A new identity for the crane's hundredth year
In February 2018 Lufthansa presented the most significant refresh of its identity in decades.1 The timing was deliberate. The crane that Otto Firle had drawn in 1918 was turning one hundred, and the airline used the anniversary to bring its appearance into line with how it wanted to be seen: as a contemporary premium brand.2 The change was substantial in tone, but it was careful with the heritage it inherited. The crane stayed at the centre, refined rather than replaced.1
The most visible change was colour. For the first time the historic yellow stepped back.2 The deep blue that had always shared the identity with yellow became the dominant colour, and the bright, almost egg-yolk yellow disappeared from the aircraft.1, 3, 4 Yellow was not abolished. It was kept for more personal and surprising moments, such as the welcome sign passengers meet when they board, where a flash of the old colour still signals the brand.3
Why the blue changed
The livery work was led by the designer David Hedley Noble, who had shaped Lufthansa aircraft looks for years.3 His aim was to make the airline's modern, premium self-understanding more tangible through a clearer colour language.3 The new blue was developed to look richer and almost three-dimensional in the way it caught the light, holding up in fog and in bright sun alike.3 Removing the strong yellow from the fuselage and tail was part of the same logic: a calmer, deeper palette that read as more expensive and more current.
According to Noble, aircraft design should never follow trends and must last at least 20 to 30 years, with the real skill lying in maximum reduction and in what is left out.3
That principle connected the 2018 work directly to the brand's history. Noble has pointed to Otto Firle as the model, a designer who, more than a hundred years earlier, created a streamlined and highly stylised crane that still looked modern.3 The refresh was framed not as a break from the heritage but as a return to its discipline.
Building the system with Martin et Karczinski
Behind the visible changes sat a larger programme. Lufthansa developed its new brand identity with the Munich agency Martin et Karczinski, which described the task as building a brand identity system and, from it, a complete brand experience.5, 6 The agency's starting point was that the world was changing quickly through digitalisation, globalisation and rising complexity, and that Lufthansa had to renew itself as a company and a brand in order to stay relevant.5
The system was designed to absorb future change rather than freeze a single look.5 Two ideas sat at its centre: a contemporary premium claim, and empathy for the people in their respective situations, both employees and passengers.5 Combined with the functional and reduced appearance drawn from the brand's heritage, the result was intended to be a convincingly timeless design rather than a fashionable one.5 The work extended across the brand experience, from the corporate typeface and colour system to the way the identity appeared at the many points where travellers meet the airline.5, 6
Continuity as the strategy
What makes the 2018 programme instructive is how little it disturbed the brand's core. The crane remained, the circle remained, and the basic architecture established at Ulm in the 1960s was respected.2, 4 The changes were concentrated where they could modernise perception without eroding recognition: a deeper blue, a quieter role for yellow, a refreshed type and a consistent system across touchpoints.1, 5 This was a brand refresh in the precise sense, a lighter-touch modernisation rather than a wholesale overhaul.
The decision echoed earlier moments in the brand's history. In the late 1980s Lufthansa had pushed yellow further forward to feel warmer, but stopped short of drafts that staff mocked as turning the crane into a "flying canary", keeping the crane in its circle unchanged.2 In 2018 it moved the colour balance in the opposite direction, toward a cooler and more premium blue, while again leaving the symbol itself essentially intact. In both cases the airline treated the crane as fixed and the surrounding system as adjustable.
The 2018 identity became the platform for everything that followed, including the special liveries created for the brand's centenary in 2026.3 By establishing a premium colour world and a flexible system, the refresh gave Lufthansa room to stage anniversary designs and new expressions without starting from scratch. A century after Firle's first drawing, the brand had once again modernised its appearance while keeping faith with the bird at its heart.
Source: martinetkarczinski.de
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. Lufthansa Group Newsroom, "Herkunft trifft Zukunft. Lufthansa stellt neues Markendesign vor.", 7 February 2018, for the presentation of the new brand design in February 2018 on the occasion of the crane's hundredth birthday, with every detail of the design revised and Lufthansa aircraft receiving a new livery for the first time in 30 years; for the crane being kept, made slimmer and set in a thinner ring; for the blue developed specially for Lufthansa, slightly darker and more refined, becoming the leading brand colour, with yellow kept for orientation and emotional accents; and for the airline's own new typeface. The release behind the newsroom entry listed in the verse's sources. https://newsroom.lufthansagroup.com/herkunft-trifft-zukunft-lufthansa-stellt-neues-markendesign-vor/
2. Lufthansa, "Kranich", the centenary page on the crane through time, undated, retrieved 25 September 2026, for Otto Firle having drawn the crane in 1918; for the crane's hundredth birthday in 2018 bringing a modern new appearance in which a new blue and a specially developed typeface express the brand's "neue Selbstverständnis als Premium-Marke"; for yellow stepping into the background and being used only as a discreet accent; for the redesign of the crane begun at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm and the blue tail with a yellow circle and a blue crane established in the mid 1960s; and for the late 1980s, when Lufthansa, perceived above all as a cool business airline, set out to make its appearance more emotional, brought the signal colour yellow further forward, saw some drafts go so far that they met internal resistance, with staff calling the crane the "fliegender Kanarienvogel", and kept the crane in its circle unchanged as the calm, reliable centre. https://www.lufthansa.com/am/de/100-years/crane
3. Lufthansa, "100 Jahre Lufthansa: Die Boeing 787-9 im „Superkranich"-Design", 19 December 2025, for the interview with David Hedley Noble, the Irish-British designer who creates liveries for Lufthansa aircraft, in which the interviewer puts it to him that he changed the Lufthansa blue in 2018 and banished the typical fried-egg yellow from the aircraft ("Trotzdem haben Sie den Blauton von Lufthansa 2018 verändert und das typische Spiegelei-Gelb von den Flugzeugen verbannt. Warum?"); for his answer that the aim was to make Lufthansa's modern premium understanding more tangible in the design, including "eine klarere Farbsprache", that the new blue is more refined and looks almost three-dimensional in the way it reflects light and shows to advantage in fog or in glaring sunlight, and that yellow was not removed entirely but is used in more personal, surprising ways, for example on the welcome sign on boarding; for the principle the body renders in indirect speech, in the original German: "Flugzeugdesign darf sich auf keinen Fall an Trends orientieren, sondern muss mindestens 20 bis 30 Jahre Bestand haben." and "Die Formel dahinter ist so einfach wie anspruchsvoll: maximale Reduktion. Komplexität lässt sich leicht erzeugen, doch wahre Gestaltungskunst zeigt sich im Weglassen."; for Noble on Otto Firle, who achieved this "vor über hundert Jahren" with a streamlined, strongly stylised crane that still radiates modernity; and for the centenary super crane livery as one of the first ideas of the 2018 rebrand ("Es war eine der ersten Ideen, die im Rahmen des Lufthansa Rebrandings 2018 entstanden sind"). The article does not say that Noble led the 2018 livery work, nor how long he has worked for Lufthansa. https://www.lufthansa.com/am/de/articles/explore-flying/anniversary-super-crane-special
4. Wikipedia, "Lufthansa", retrieved 25 September 2026, for the 2018 livery change in which the encircled crane was retained and the background changed from yellow to dark blue, and for the comprehensive corporate design Otl Aicher created for the airline in 1967, with the crane in a yellow circle on a blue tailfin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa
5. Martin et Karczinski, "Case Lufthansa", undated, retrieved 25 September 2026, for the agency's account of the starting point, that amid ever faster digitalisation, globalisation and complexity Lufthansa recognised it had to transform fundamentally as a company and a brand "um weiterhin relevant zu bleiben"; for the Brand Identity System formulated to anticipate future change ("auch den künftigen Wandel mitdenkenden") and the target picture of a new holistic Brand Experience developed from it together with Lufthansa; for the contemporary premium claim and the empathy for people in their respective context, "Mitarbeitende und Passagiere"; for the functional and reduced appearance shaped by the heritage and the "überzeugend zeitloses Design" it produced; and for the case's Corporate Type and Corporate Colors films. The page carries no date and does not name the agency's city. https://www.martinetkarczinski.de/de/cases/lufthansa
6. HORIZONT, Fabian Wurm, "Kranich-Airline: Lufthansa enthüllt Details zum neuen Design", 8 February 2018, for the new appearance having been conceived by Lufthansa's designers "in Kooperation mit der Münchner Branding-Agentur Martin et Karczinski", and for the bold Helvetica giving way to the Lufthansa Corporate Type, a typeface cut specially by Hannes von Döhren. A German advertising trade publication, off whitelist and used for corroboration only. Added during the footnote retrofit. https://www.horizont.net/marketing/nachrichten/Kranich-Airline-Lufthansa-enthuellt-Details-zum-neuen-Design-164697
